Chapter 9: Bells

Near watched the clock tick the day away.

No one came in to see him, except for the infirmary lady, to check up on his condition. She didn't speak a word. They hadn't seen each other since the first time Mello had hurt him. She simply tended to his needs efficiently and in silence. He didn't speak to her either, merely studied her movements. They were hurried, as if she wanted to get out of the room as soon as possible. Afraid of being left alone with a murderer, perhaps? He wondered groggily as he lay back against his pillows, closing his eyes. He kept as still as he possibly could; that was the only way he could experience some relief. They had lowered his painkiller dosage, to his displeasure.

He slept for long hours, nightmares gradually beginning to trouble him less. He could almost feel himself healing, every time he woke from one of those deep sleeps. Of course, he thought, there was the possibility that he might just be getting used to the pain. He wasn't entirely sure. I was hard to think in his current condition.

Hours passed in silence; the gluggy lunch that the infirmary lady had left with him grew steadily colder. He wasn't sure whether it was scrambled eggs or porridge. Either way, it didn't matter, as he was stubbornly ignoring it. He felt if he ate anything he would only have to vomit again, anyway. He busied himself with one of his puzzles; the infirmary lady had left a few boxes on his bedside table. Near wasn't sure what to make of that; surely after all he'd done he didn't deserve to have his toys returned to him...

Not once was he visited; not by Brendan, Simon, not even by Linda. This didn't surprise him in the slightest, nor did it particularly bother him, in his state of drug-induced vacancy. Besides, he told himself, it wasn't as if they were his friends. They had only ever been tools of his, he told himself, toys to play with. He had never actually cared about them, or what they thought of him... But was it really so hard just to visit? Even only so they could yell and scream at him for ruining everything. For killing Rei and Pepe. He just wanted to see another person's face; wanted something to break the endless, screaming silence. It would be better to be hated than to be ignored.

Still no one came, and Near spent the morning drifting in and out of consciousness. At exactly 2:26 Near was woken by more raised voices from the hallway. Children running, yelling, running past his room; the direction of the hall.

"He's here!!" they called, and the words broke through the fog in Near's head, hitting home. Hard. L was here.

L... was here.... Near's heart was in his mouth. L...

He sat upright, by now quite good at ignoring the stretchy feeling knife-pain of his abdomen. L was here. It felt like electricity was coursing through his body, pushing back the fog, giving him new strength. Adrenaline, he figured. But was he excited, or frightened? It didn't matter now. L was here. In this very building. The same building Near was in. And he would surely come visit Near, too. They would talk. About a thousand different things; art and technology, science and history. And somehow, somewhere along the way, L would make everything okay again.

He didn't start worrying until 6:14 in the evening. Where was L? Surely he should have come by now. The infirmary lady appeared to take away his untouched lunch and provide him with dinner. He asked her where L was, and she shrugged non-committally in reply. He felt his stomach sinking. He asked her when L would be leaving. Tomorrow evening, she said. After the funeral. Well that was okay, Near thought, comforting himself as she took her leave. L would come before tomorrow evening... Unless he hates you too, now you're a filthy murderer...

xXx

The funeral was over. L would be on a plane back to Japan by now.

Near was sitting upright, as he had been the entire day, and the whole of the night before. Waiting. He stared at his knees, gripping his white covers tightly with shaking hands. L hadn't come. Near's eyes were full, but the tears remained unshed. They simply blocked his vision, distorted everything so it felt like he was in a dream. He couldn't quite come to terms with it. He had waited hours and hours, breath catching every time he heard footsteps outside his door. But L had never come. And now he was gone.

He felt the breathing he had been trying so hard to keep under control become harsh and uneven. He couldn't understand. The only thing he could comprehend was that L had abandoned him. Just like ever other person in his life. A small, feeble cry of despair escaped his lips as the tears overflowed and the sobs started. L had been the only one left.

He was so alone.

Not fully aware of what he was doing, he pushed the covers off his legs and swung them over the side of the bed. Enough. He had to get out of here. He was suffocating in here. He barely even felt his injuries as he stumbled down the orphanage's white-washed halls. He felt a different kind of hurt instead. He didn't meet a soul as he ran. He made it past the kitchens this time. Out the back doors.

His breath was coming in harsh gasps as he ran. He didn't quite know how long he ran for, through those fields where exposed roots tripped him up and sharp seeds of the knee-high grasses snagged and caught on his socks. He skinned his palms once when he fell, but he didn't even notice, he simply stood once more and kept running. He had to get away from there. Eventually he was too exhausted and in too far much pain to keep running, so he simply walked through the endless fields of long grass, until Wammy's house was no longer in sight. He didn't look back, however. There was nothing for him back in that place, anymore.

They could go find a new smartest orphan in the world, for all he cared. He wasn't going back. So he kept walking, as far as his legs would take him, resolved never to stop until his legs gave out. There was a whole world out there, he knew, and he could find something else. Maybe even find someone who wouldn't lie. Someone who might care for him, a little bit. The world was big. There was more to the it than one small, insignificant orphanage. There was more to life than becoming L. There had to be more.

His sobs and hiccups had died down by this point, and the only evidence of his tears were the shiny track marks on his cheeks and the red rims around his eyes. He soldiered on, into the darkness. Indeed, it was so dark now he could hardly see more than two metres in front of him. It was getting cold, too. He wrapped his arms around his middle, against the cold and the throbbing pain which was steadily reasserting itself. He wondered briefly if he had torn the wound open again while he was running. He decided he didn't care.

Slowly the grass was thinning, revealing beneath it dark, jagged rocks that tore through Near's socks and his feet. He didn't care. It meant he was getting somewhere. He felt a breeze pick up, tugging impatiently at his white curls and at his clothes. It shocked him. He hadn't felt the wind on his face in so long. It smelt sharp; of salt and metal. The ocean. The scent amazed him... All of those years he had spent at Wammy's, never knowing that the sea had been this close... He kept walking until the sharp rocks had taken over completely.

The wind was strong here. It buffeted against him, making his clothes whip around him, his eyes water at the cold and the salt. He thought he heard the soft sound of bells, almost lost in the roaring. It made him smile, a little. He took another step forward, curious as to where the sound was coming from.

And suddenly he was falling through the darkness. Falling, until he hit something hard with a crack. Something cold that swallowed him up and roughly pulled him down, down into a swirling mess of wet and cold and dark. I'm drowning... Near realised numbly as he stretched his hands out before him, ghostly white shapes against the dark water. And I'd always been so afraid of burning to death... The last breath Near took was used to laugh. Then he felt the freezing water rush into his lungs, icy and knife-sharp.

Terror. His body shook violently, as it desperately tried to cough the water back up, only to draw in more. Slowly his vision disappeared and he felt his mind leaving him as his body drifted without purpose, like a rag-doll. Right before he blacked out he thought he felt hands. Large, strong hands under his arms, lifting him upwards...

… Near… Come back…

Then pain. Cold, sharp rocks on his back and hands on his chest, pushing down. His ribs cried out in agony, but his lungs obeyed, rejecting the water that they had held until now. He felt fingers block his nose and soft lips clamp around his own, felt lungs that didn't belong to him share with him a breath. A breath that saved him.

His eyes flew open, and he turned to his side, muscles spasming gracelessly back into life. He coughed and coughed and coughed until there was nothing left to cough up. He gasped, feeling the oxygen flying to his brain, his heart, his muscles, making him feel dizzy, weak. He could breathe again, he could see again. He looked around in confusion and terror as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, trying to remember where he was. He found himself on a small outcrop of stone above the dark, roaring ocean. The waves crashed against the cliffs around him, throwing up fans of spray: beautiful, powerful things. He watched them in awe until he realised that he shouldn't be here, he should be down there in the ocean, drowning.

Dying, like he had been before- He turned slowly around, his arms hugging his middle, to see what it was that had saved his life.

The creature that he found crouching behind him was a pale, lanky thing, with long arms, legs and long, delicate looking hands. Were those the strong hands that had pulled him from the water? It certainly appeared that way, as the inky dark hair that fell into the man's dark eyes dripped with salty water.

It was the eyes. Those black, fathomless eyes with the dark shadows beneath them. Near's eyes.

"...L?"

The man's dark eyes widened ever so slightly at Near's hoarse question. Almost imperceptibly, but Near saw.

"Are you alright?" the man murmured, his soft voice almost lost in the wind. That low, quiet voice surprised Near. He had half expected a distorted, electric one.

"Are you L!?" he demanded furiously, scowling with sore, red-rimmed eyes. A small, frustrated part of him wondered if he was delusional. Who bases a whole theory on something as ridiculous as a pair of eyes?? A different part of him- the stubborn part- decided it didn't matter. He simply knew he was right.

The man's lips parted and he looked down at his spidery hands, frowning. As if he wanted to answer, but wasn't sure how. As if he had never had the need to answer, before. He looked back up into Near's eyes, seeming to come to a solution. He had a serious look in his eye, like someone facing up so something they had done. Something they regretted.

"I am."

Near felt his limbs weakening, felt himself stumbling forward, onto his hands and knees in utter exhaustion. Hot, salty tears of relief stung at his eyes.

"Good." was his last, whispered word before he blacked out once more, letting sweet unconsciousness take over.

xXx

L woke up to the sound of bells.

Which, in itself, was enough to paralyse him with shock, for in order to wake up one had to have previously been sleeping. And L didn't sleep. Of course, another reason L was unable to move was the soft white thing in his arms, pinning him against the stone wall of the outcrop upon which he sat. It was sleeping blissfully, breathing lightly as it rested it's soft cheek against his throat. L found that he had buried his own face in it's fine, snow-coloured hair. ...Near.

How odd. How strange to wake up here, L found himself thinking absently, more than a little confused. He assessed the situation for a moment or two, as his mind began to clear and memories of the previous night returned to him.

He had come to the cliffs to be alone.

L had come to the cliffs to escape the demanding cries for attention that came at him from all sides whenever he was amongst the children. They never seemed satisfied with any answer he gave them; another question always followed the last. L couldn't help but wonder if anything would ever be enough for them. How did this beautiful, complex world so fail to capture their attention that they felt the need to fill each perfect silence in their desperate quest for answers?

He had come to see the old monastery ruin, his childhood haunt- the source the bells that he could hear now- at least once more before he left that place forever. And that was when he had seen the little white figure standing on the edge of the cliff. He had been shocked. What had Near been doing, so far from Wammy's, by himself? How had he even found this place, injured as he was?

Then he had watched in numb horror as that white figure had plummeted to the dark, swirling ocean below. And suddenly L was running like he had never run before.

He had never been so terrified. He had never felt so helpless in his entire life, not tied up by a vengeful serial killer with a knife to his throat; not when he had fallen from a helicopter 40 stories in the air; not as a child, hiding under a bed as his friends were shot to pieces in that very room; not when he had been kidnapped and beaten until he couldn't move; not when he had first revealed his identity as L to Yagami Raito. No, that moment of sheer terror when the small pale boy wouldn't wake up was worth a billion of those moments and more. "Near... Near, come back... please, breathe..."

And now, the sky was beginning to glow that soft, unearthly blue of almost-dawn, and L was holding in his arms the one thing he was the most afraid of. He couldn't lie to himself anymore. It wasn't the threat of Kira that had made L jump off that cliff. It wasn't the greater good that had him using every ounce of strength he had to drag the boy out of the water, onto the rocks.

He hadn't been crying for humanity, when he had thought he was too late.

Just Near.

… What?

This realisation terrified him, as he sat there in the slowly lightening morning, and he couldn't help but hold Near a little tighter, as he remembered how it had felt. And even now, when the child was alive and safe in his arms, he couldn't shake it off. That one moment of brutal honesty had stripped away all the careful lies and compromises L used to shield himself from the truth: That he had come to care about the child.

What was it about him that made L smile whenever he was successful or victorious at something he undertook? What was it that made L so fiercely protective and possessive when it came to the boy's fate? What was it that made him obsessively check to see if Roger had sent him anything new whenever there was a computer nearby? What was it about his own brief conversations with Near that so captured his fascination? He wasn't sure, exactly, but he did know that it wasn't solely objective, as it should have been. L felt he might be sick.

The self loathing was quickly settling in. "You won't be happy until he breaks, will you" Watari had said...

Near had bore every horror L had fancied to put him through, and somehow still come out of that as the strong, pure person he had been before. He had survived abuse, betrayal, rejection, despair, crushing disillusionment... And for what? Had L hoped to turn Near into himself? A broken, bitter shell of a person who trusted no one... who loved no one... ? Mello's furious words came back to him. "What the hell are you even trying to achieve?!" What had he been trying to achieve? He couldn't remember. He didn't know anymore.

All he knew is that he had just given this child the power to hurt him. This child; the one person on the earth who had the greatest cause to.

That child in his arms was stirring now, his small, pale hands rubbing the grit out of his eyes. He took a few moments of his own to get his bearings, looking around at the cliffs that surrounded them, then back into L's face. He gave a small, contented smile.

"L."

… "He still has you."

"And we will take that from him too, when the time is right" ...

L tried his best to smile back.

A/N: Short one, I know, but hopefully a good one. Course, I'm not the judge of that, YOU ARE!! So let me know what your opinion is. Do you forgive L? Do you hate him even more? (I hope not...)

I know it seems weird for Near to be running so soon after he was essentially impaled on a roof-beam (it seems to ridiculous when I put it like that...), but my excuse is that he was so distraught he just muscled past the agony he would have felt when all his wounds reopened whilst running. He's an manga/anime character. He can do that. *shifty eyes* So yeah... Plus, it helps explain the reason he NEVER seems to move or even stand up in the anime... :D He screwed up his body for life.

I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with this chapter and all L's internal monologue, so I may revamp it later, but I figured it would be better for me to just post it and not keep you waiting than to spend forever editing and editing. =P

Hope you like it anyway.

Love CANDY xxx